Registering and configuring Oracle Solaris Cluster HA for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise
Edition involves the tasks that are explained in the following sections.

Determining Which Services You Need

Figure 2 helps you to decide which services you need for a failover configuration.
Figure 3 helps you to decide which services you need for a multi-master configuration.

Figure 2 Oracle BI EE Resources in a Failover Configuration

Figure 3 Oracle BI EE Resources in a Multi-Master Configuration

Presentation Services Configuration

This section describes how to configure the Presentation Services and create the appropriate
Solaris Cluster resource groups and resources for both a failover and a multi-master
case.

Once the Oracle BI EE Presentation Services software has been installed, you must
configure the WebLogic Server to load the analytics.ear (Enterprise Archive) file as described in
the Oracle WebLogic Server documentation. Ensure that the plug-in is marked as active,
otherwise attempts to connect to the service will result in HTTP 503 errors.
The plug-in cannot be tested until the entire stack, Presentation Services, BI Server
and Cluster Controller, where appropriate, are set up.

How to Define a Failover Configuration for Presentation Services

Before You Begin

Before you create the BI Presentation Service resource for a failover configuration, you
might need to edit the following files:

BI_DATA_DIRECTORY/web/config/instanceconfig.xml – Check the setting for the <DSN> tag. This field references a [tag_name] section in the odbc.ini file.

BI_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/setup/odbc.ini – Set the ServerMachine and Port entries that will be used by the BI server. For a failover configuration, the ServerMachine corresponds to the host name plumbed by the SUNW.LogicalHostname resource in the BI Server resource group.

Set an offline_restart dependency between the WebLogic Server resource and the BI Presentation
Services resource.

Because the WebLogic Server Presentation Service plug-in sends requests to the local BI
Presentation Service server process, the WebLogic Server resource must set an offline_restart dependency on
the BI Presentation Service resource. This setting ensures that if a BI Presentation
Service server is unavailable, the load-balancer stops sending requests to the WebLogic Server.

The Presentation Services tier results in two processes being started: sawserver and a
Java process. The name of the sawserver process depends on whether the
64-bit option is chosen.

If the BI server has been configured, you can log in from
a web browser using one of the accounts that you have configured. For example,
if the WebLogic Server is running on logical host green-lh1 on port
7003, the URL would be http://green-lh1:7003/analytics/saw.dll?Dashboard.

How to Define a Multi-Master Configuration for Presentation Services

A multi-master Presentation Services configuration requires a multi-master WebLogic Server configuration and a
mechanism to load-balance incoming web connections. A failover Sun Java Web Server with
a load-balancing plug-in can be configured to perform this task. For more information about
creating a multi-master configuration for WebLogic Server, see Oracle Solaris Cluster Data Service for WebLogic Server Guide.

Before You Begin

Before you create the multi-master configuration for BI Presentation Services, you need to
edit the following configuration file:

BI_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/setup/odbc.ini – A multi-master Presentation Services configuration requires primary and secondary cluster controllers to be defined in the odbc.ini file. Therefore, ensure that the PrimaryCCS and SecondaryCCS entries are present in the file. The host names used must be capable of being resolved.

Note - When using a multi-master BI Presentation Services configuration, the instanceconfig.xml and odbc.ini files must
remain synchronized. You can manually copy the changes between machines, or you can
link the files to centrally held copies on a global file system. However,
if you link these two files, the remainder of the Oracle BI EE
software must be installed on local file systems.

Create a resource group for the multi-master WebLogic Server configuration.

Set an offline_restart dependency between the WebLogic Server resource and the BI Presentation
Services resource.

Because the WebLogic Server Presentation Service plug-in sends requests to the local BI
Presentation Service server process, the WebLogic Server resource must set an offline_restart dependency on
the BI Presentation Service resource. This ensures that if a BI Presentation Service
server is unavailable, the load-balancer stops sending requests to the WebLogic Server.

When a multi-master configuration is used, connection is made through the logical host name
of the load-balancer resource. For example, if the Sun Java System Web Server
is running on logical host web-svr-lh, the URL is http://wls-svr-lh/analytics/saw.dll?Dashboard. The requests
are then load-balanced to the underlying managed WebLogic Servers that listen on port
7003.

BI Server Configuration

This section describes how to configure the BI server and create the appropriate
Solaris Cluster resource groups and resources for both a failover and a multi-master
case.

How to Define a Failover Configuration for BI Server

The failover BI server configuration does not require a cluster controller because there
is only one active BI server process. Therefore, configuration of a failover BI
server is similar to configuration on a single server with the exception that
the software is installed directly on a failover file system managed by Solaris
Cluster.

Before You Begin

Before you create the BI Server resource for a failover configuration, you might
need to edit the following files:

BI_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/server/Config/NQSConfig.INI – Verify the following settings:

All the file paths should be part of the failover file system.

SERVER_HOSTNAME_OR_IP_ADDRESSES should be set to the logical host name or ALLNICS.

CLUSTER_PARTICIPANT must be set to NO .

BI_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/server/Config/NQClusterConfig.INI – Set ENABLE_CONTROLLER to NO. Although not strictly required by Oracle BI EE, this setting ensures that there is no confusion as to the configuration being implemented.

Because the BI Server does not have any hard dependencies on other services,
it does not require any resource dependencies to be set. Once the BI
server is running, connection can be made through the Web interface.

How to Define a Multi-Master Configuration for BI Server

A multi-master BI Server configuration requires primary and secondary BI Cluster Controller to
be configured, although strictly speaking, the secondary BI controller is optional when creating
a Solaris Cluster configuration. The BI Cluster Controller is responsible for load-balancing the requests
coming in from the Presentation Services clients to the available BI servers.

Before You Begin

Before you create the BI Server resource for a failover configuration, you might
need to edit the following files:

BI_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/server/Config/NQSConfig.INI – Verify the following settings:

SERVER_HOSTNAME_OR_IP_ADDRESSES should be commented out.

CLUSTER_PARTICIPANT must be set to YES .

BI_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/server/Config/NQClusterConfig.INI – Verify the following settings:

Note - Although not strictly required by Oracle BI EE, these settings are used to verify the resource group settings for the cluster controller configuration.

ENABLE_CONTROLLER must be set to YES .

Primary and secondary controllers are defined to listen on logical hosts, for example:

PRIMARY_CONTROLLER = "red-lh2";
SECONDARY_CONTROLLER = "red-lh3";

Servers are set to a list of the nodes that are defined in the multi-master resource group, for example:

SERVERS = "red-zone1","red-zone2";

One of the nodes in the multi-master resource group is set to be the master server, for example:

In the example below, the PROBE user and password are optional. The password
is not protected, therefore, the user account must have no privileges to query anything
other than the list of catalogs from the BI servers. This approach enables
the probe to connect to the BI server and get a response back
to the list catalogs query which helps to demonstrate the responsiveness of the BI
server.

How to Define a Highly Available BI Cluster Controller Configuration

Before you create the BI Cluster Controller resource for a failover configuration, you
might need to edit the following file:

BI_INSTALL_DIRECTORY/server/Config/NQClusterConfig.INI – Verify the following settings:

ENABLE_CONTROLLER must be set to YES .

Primary and secondary cluster controllers are defined to listen on logical hosts, for example:

PRIMARY_CONTROLLER = "red-lh2";
SECONDARY_CONTROLLER = "red-lh3";

Servers are set to a list of the nodes that are defined in the multi-master resource group, for example:

SERVERS = "red-zone1","red-zone2";

One of the nodes in the multi-master resource group is set to be the master server, for example:

MASTER_SERVER = "red-zone1";

Create a resource group for the primary BI Cluster Controller.

# clrg create -n phys-red1:red-zone1 fo-bi-pcc-rg

Note - Although the failover resource group can contain more than one node, the list
of nodes for the primary BI Cluster Controller resource group and the list
of nodes for the secondary BI Cluster Controller resource group cannot intersect.

Create the logical host name resource for the primary BI Cluster Controller.

Note - Although the failover resource group can contain more than one node, the list
of nodes for the primary BI Cluster Controller resource group and the list
of nodes for the secondary BI Cluster Controller resource group cannot intersect.

Create the logical host name resource for the secondary BI Cluster Controller.

Note - If the schedule database is an Oracle database on an Oracle Solaris
Cluster configuration, make the schedule highly available by using the HA-Oracle Solaris Cluster agent
or by using an Oracle RAC database with Oracle Solaris Cluster.

How to Define a Multi-Master Configuration for BI Scheduler

A multi-master BI Scheduler configuration requires primary and secondary BI Cluster Controllers to
be configured as explained in BI Cluster Controller Configuration, although strictly speaking, the secondary BI Cluster
Controller is optional when creating a Solaris Cluster configuration. The BI Cluster Controller is
responsible for directing requests coming in from the Presentation Services clients to the
active BI scheduler.

As user oracle (or any non-root user), install the Oracle Database client software
on the servers that will host the scheduler.

The schedulers need access to the Oracle Database client libraries and tnsnames.ora file
to be able to connect to the scheduler database.

Create and configure a database to hold the scheduler job information.